A lion's head and skin from an East African safari expedition donated to The Explorers Club sometime between 1908 and 1910 by Teddy Roosevelt decorate a surface in the club's trophy room. The stuffed animals date back to early club days when big game hunting and conservation were not considered mutually exclusive. Today the club advocates preservation of animals.

Elephant tusks, a cheetah and sable antelope heads, above, decorate one area of the Trophy Room - along with a portrait of Danish explorer and club member Peter Freuchen - at The Explorers Club in New York.

Snowshoes, an airplane propeller and photographs decorate the walls of the bar at The Explorers Club.

New York ? The Explorers Club was going to extremes long before the concept was in vogue.

The club has remained vibrant for more than a century by quenching a thirst to visit the world’s uncharted regions and bring back knowledge about the people, plants and animals found there.

Reaching the Earth’s poles, its highest summit, the deepest part of its oceans or the surface of the moon were all important firsts recorded by Explorers Club members, but those journeys were also valued for the new perspectives the adventurers gained along the way.

“At its core, the club is about humanism,” said archaeologist Joan Breton Connelly, a professor of classics and art history at New York University, and a club member since 1990.

The club’s belief in the importance of exploration and how it can benefit humankind was perhaps best exemplified by its honorary chair, Sir Edmund Hillary. With Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, he was first to the top of Mount Everest.

The former beekeeper from New Zealand, who died last month, used his fame to aid the Sherpa people who have formed the backbone of nearly every expedition to Nepal’s mountain region near Everest.

“Sir Edmund Hillary exemplified the very spirit that keeps the world exploring,” club president Daniel A. Bennett said.

Hillary, who preferred to be called Ed, returned to the Himalayas throughout his life, making it his calling to help the Nepali people.

“Let’s be like Ed,” Bennett said. “Then we’d all be better off.”

Arctic roots

The club was formed in 1905 in New York City by veterans of Arctic exploration. The race to get to the poles was at a fever pitch and its early years were dominated by expeditions to the top and bottom of the Earth.

Frederick A. Cook and Robert E. Peary were among the club’s first presidents. Though Cook claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1908, Peary is generally given credit for accomplishing the feat a year later.

Roald Amundsen of Norway beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole, arriving on Dec. 21, 1911, to edge the ill-fated Englishman by just under a month.

Hillary reached the top of the world, the 29,035-foot Mount Everest, in May 1953.

The club also lays claim to the record for the deepest ocean dive, by U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard in January 1960. Sealed inside the 150-ton bathyscaph Trieste, the pair descended to 35,800 feet in the Marianas Trench off Guam in the Pacific Ocean.

The fifth “famous first” achieved by club members was the Apollo 11 mission that resulted in Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.

A small version of the club’s flag went with the astronauts, continuing a tradition that began in 1918. Since then, members undertaking expeditions that further exploration and field science could apply to carry the flag with the understanding they would report on their discoveries upon their return.

There have been more than 300 so-called flag expeditions, with some of the red, white and blue flags being used multiple times. The miniature flag that went on Apollo 11 is one of the retired flags on display in the Clark Room inside the club’s headquarters on Manhattan’s East Side.

Others include one carried by Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 on his trans-Pacific trip aboard the balsa-wood raft Kon-Tiki. Another is the flag Roy Chapman Andrews took on his trip to the Gobi Desert in 1923. Andrews came back with the first known fossilized dinosaur eggs. Andrews, according to club communications director Jeff Stiller, was the real-life model for Indiana Jones of celluloid fame.

Treasure trove

After nearly 50 years in a loft on Amsterdam Avenue, the club found a permanent base in 1965 at the Lowell Thomas Building, which is named for the CBS correspondent who introduced T.E. Lawrence, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” to the Western world.

“Every time I cross that threshold there is some sort of uplifting experience on the other side,” Breton Connelly said of entering the building and the conversations she’s had there with fellow members.

The club’s headquarters contains a treasure trove of exploration artifacts and memorabilia in its high-ceilinged, oak-paneled rooms.

Elephant tusks frame the fireplace in the members lounge just off the entrance to the former private residence. The foyer has a large globe Heyerdahl used to promote his trip from Peru to Polynesia and an ice ax sculpture signed by Hillary. Artwork done by members dots the walls, depicting the flora, fauna and vistas they encountered on their trips.

The stairway to the second floor is lined by oil paintings William Leigh created as studies for the dioramas in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History.

The Clark Room, which is used for banquets and lectures, is on the second floor and is guarded by an adolescent polar bear, albeit a stuffed one.

The trophy room on the sixth floor contains the stuffed and mounted animal heads and furs that recall the club’s roots at the turn of the last century.

One of the most impressive features of the building is its Gallery of Dignitaries. The sixth floor stairwell is lined with photographs of distinguished former and current club members. The names and faces read like a who’s who of historic figures from the worlds of politics, science, the arts, the media, and, of course, exploration.

Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Byrd, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, Jane Goodall, Richard Leakey, Walter Cronkite, Sally Ride and Steve Fossett, the missing aviator, are just a few of the hundred or so pictured.

“The impact of these role models really do serve as inspiration to masses of young people,” said Breton Connelly, who was motivated by Goodall as a little girl growing up in Toledo, Ohio.

The club has about 3,000 members in 32 chapters around the globe. About 500 live in the New York City area.

Membership is by application with experience in scientific exploration and a belief in the importance of promoting exploration being the criteria for admission.